Connecting to Cisco VPN with Ubuntu 9.04

June 3rd, 2009  | Categories: Linux  | Tags: , ,

I recently wanted to connect to my works Cisco VPN network from my home Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) PC. As it turned out this is very straightforward.

Firstly you need to install support for the VPN protocol, which for a Cisco network meant using the following command:

$ sudo apt-get install network-manager-vpnc

Once this is installed, right click on the network icon in the system try and choose Edit Connections.

Edit connections

Select the VPN tab. You are then able create a new connection by choosing Add, or if you have a profile file then you can choose Import and select the file.

network-connections

At this point you may need to restart the network manager, or restart your machine. Do this if you get any “no valid secrets” errors.

You should now be able connect to the VPN network by left clicking on the network icon, hovering over the VPN Connections option and choosing the profile from the list.

For more information on and instructions for other protocols look at the VPN topic on the Ubuntu Wiki.

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  1. Dang Duy Phi
    June 25th, 2009 at 05:33
    #1

    Dear Mr!
    Thank for your sharing but my problem is: I have to install VPN then I will allow to access to Internet. In ur instruction you said type this command
    $ sudo apt-get install network-manager-vpnc
    But in my case, I still don’t have Internet yet so how can I download this packet and install it.
    I’ve just downloaded vpnc packet in windows but I don’t know how to install it in Ubuntu. Can you have me to solve this problem?
    Please email me at: duyphidang@gmail.com
    Thank for your help!

  2. Andrew Jones
    July 6th, 2009 at 11:48
    #2

    @Dang: Im not sure, but I guess if you wanted to install it on a computer that does not have the internet then you would need to get the source and build it yourself. The problem is, you would have to do this for each of its dependencies as well, which could be a lot of work.

    Since a VPN client is useless without access to the internet, I would just wait until you have the internet connection. It only takes a seconds to install and is painless :)

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